The Wandering Ghost

by Martin Limon

  Ernie offered his bottle of soju. It was passed to Won-sok’s mother and liquid was poured across her lips. She coughed and choked and wiped away the soju. Her eyes shot open and she sat up and placed her flattened palms in front of her nose and started to pray.

  “This mudang,” Ernie said, “knows how to work the crowd.”

  Like a whirlwind, the Widow Po banged rapidly on her drum and twirled through the women seated cross-legged on the floor, heading straight for Ernie. When she stopped banging, she stood directly over him, red eyes blazing, candlelight flaming behind her, voice wailing.

  “Chumul-cho!” she screamed. Then she banged on her drum again. Ernie looked at me, confused. “Chumul-cho!” the Widow Po screamed, more loudly this time. Her drum became an incessant roar.

  “Dance!” I told Ernie. “She wants you to stand up and dance.”

  “Bull! I don’t know how to dance.”

  “Its not that kind of dancing,” I said.

  “Chumul-cho!” the Widow Po screamed again and this time Ernie bounced to his feet as if he were being pulled up by strings. The Widow Po let go of her drum with one hand and slapped him. Hard. The splat of flesh on flesh resounded throughout the room. “Chumul-cho!” she shouted.

  Ernie began to dance.

  His legs shook at the knees and his arms flailed akimbo and the Widow Po seemed pleased and grabbed Ernie’s hand and dragged him out in front of the glowing bronze Kumbokju. She wailed and drummed and swirled around him and Ernie kept up his flailing, looking for all the world like Elvis Presley gone spastic.

  Jill started to laugh. So did I. And then all the women in the room were roaring and this seemed to encourage Ernie. The Widow Po drummed madly and Ernie flailed more wildly and finally, his face slathered in sweat, the Widow Po flung Ernie like a rag doll back into the arms of the women in the crowd.

  Exhausted, he collapsed onto his pillow. One of the women took pity on him and, grabbing another bottle of soju, poured fiery rice liquor across his lips like a mother feeding a baby.

  The drumming stopped. The Widow Po stood stock-still, her back to all of us. Perspiration on her black hair glistening in the candle glow. Her body started to quiver. Not move. Just quiver. As if something hideous was passing through her, entering through a cavity in her body and filling every pore of her being with a power that could only be expressed by the quaking of her statuesque torso.

  Then she screamed.

  The collapse to the floor was total. She slammed into wood. Rib cage, skull, everything crashed against the solid surface as if she’d fallen from a thirty-foot precipice. I thought she’d killed herself. I started to rise, but Madame Chon grabbed my arm with surprising strength and forced me to sit back down.

  Like a butterfly, effortlessly, now the Widow Po started to rise.

  She floated. Or it seemed that she floated. Probably she was standing on her tiptoes like a ballerina. But in the dark room in the flickering candlelight it seemed for a moment that she was actually levitating. And then she twirled. Her face was hideous. Contorted, angry, frightened. Aggressive and frightened at the same moment, which I knew from real life was the most dangerous state a person could be in.

  She growled.

  “Ohma!” Mother.

  The voice came from somewhere deep in the Widow Po’s throat.

  Madame Chon sat up as if someone had jabbed her in the butt with an electric prod. “Un-suk-i?” she asked.

  “Na pei kopa!” I’m hungry. “Why didn’t you come look for me? Why was your door locked to me? I’ve been searching for you. Where are you, Mother? Where have you been?”

  I hadn’t noticed earlier, but now I realized that off to my right for the last few seconds I’d been hearing an incessant humming. Like a bumblebee but louder. Jill Matthewson was praying. Her eyes were closed and she was humming through moist lips and then, without being called, she rose to her feet and walked forward; stepping deftly between the cushions and the seated women, with her eyes still closed, heading straight for the Widow Po.

  “Nugu syo?” the Widow Po asked. Who is it? But she asked it in the voice that Madame Chon recognized as her daughter’s.

  “Jill,” Corporal Jill Matthewson said. “It’s me. I’m here for you.”

  She spoke in English, but the Widow Po—or Chon Un-suk or whoever it was—seemed to understand. Once more, the Widow Po collapsed to the floor. This time she lay on her back, writhing and moaning like a child. A pitiful sound emerged from her full-grown body. A sound any human being would react to. The sound of a child in pain. The sound of a child dying.

  Jill knelt next to her. I scooted to my left to see better. Jill’s eyes were still closed but her hands performed the movements they’d been trained to perform. First, she cleared the air passage. Then she checked for bleeding. Then she took off her own blouse and covered the Widow Po and grabbed the drum that lay on the floor and used it to elevate the Widow Po’s feet. Then she leaned forward and said in English, “You’re going to be all right, honey. You’ll be all right. Someone’s coming to help you. They’ll be here soon.”

  The Widow Po said, “Ohma,” and then she took a huge breath, held it, and as she let it out her entire body shuddered. She lay still.

  I thought the Widow Po was dead; I was sure she was dead. So did Jill Matthewson. Or the person who once called herself Jill Matthewson. In a trance, Jill leaned down, touched the body’s chest over the heart, pinched the carotid artery, and lowered her cheek in front of the Widow Po’s open mouth. When she was sure that the body below was dead, Jill began to cry. I tried to rise to my feet. No one, not even a mudang as skilled as the Widow Po, could hold her breath for that long. I tried to rise to my feet but Madame Chon grabbed my elbow with two hands and, with the strength of a man, held me where I was.

  Nervously, Ernie slugged down another shot of soju.

  Then, Jill Matthewson leaned further over the body, slid her forearms beneath the body’s back, and raised the body of the Widow Po into the air. The Widow Po, tall and as heavy as she was, hung lifelessly in Jill Matthewson’s arms. Jill, still on her knees, turned and finally her eyes opened. She seemed to be searching for someone, and then she found her. The woman sitting next to me, Madame Chon, the mother of Chon Un-suk. Jill rose to her feet— almost effortlessly considering all the weight she was carrying— and walked toward Madame Chon. Everyone rose to their feet, sighing, crying, hugging one another. When Jill stood in front of Madame Chon, she bowed and as if she were offering a bouquet of roses, she placed the lifeless body in Madame Chon’s arms. Tears streamed from Madame Chon’s eyes but she grabbed the body, enfolded it, clasped it against her breast, and kneeled. Jill helped her lower the body until the Widow Po lay, lifeless, across the lap of Madame Chon.

  No more sound came from the Widow Po. Only whimpering from the crowd.

  Jill left the room.Ernie and I found her out in the courtyard, leaning next to the stone well.

  Vomiting.

  The next morning, Madame Chon assured us that the Widow Po was all right.

  “She do all the time,” she told us.

  “She dies all the time?” Ernie asked.

  “Yes. Then come back. No problem.”

  Jill punched Ernie in the shoulder.

  They were starting to like each other. I’d noticed that, and I can’t say that I was happy about it. Brandy, I didn’t mind, but now Ernie was after Jill Matthewson. It wasn’t any of my business, I knew that rationally, but it bothered me nevertheless. I liked the way she smiled and the freckles across her nose and the way she was determined to do the right thing.

  After a breakfast of steamed rice, roasted mackerel, and pickled bean sprouts, we were ready to start our day. As we sipped barley tea, I made Jill go over it again, the story of how she and the stripper, Kim Yong-ai, overnight, raised two thousand dollars U.S.

  “She helped me all the time,” Jill said. “How to change the charcoal, how to cook on the butane stove, how to wash my laundry and where to han
g it up to dry. With everything.”

  “So you became friends?” Ernie asked.

  “Yeah. She lived right next door. We drank tea. We talked.”

  “Her English was pretty good?” I asked.

  “Okay. I taught her some. She taught me Korean. Out of her dictionary.”

  “So the Division honchos did a number on her at the mafia meeting,” Ernie said. “She had a case of the ass.”

  “Wouldn’t you?” Jill asked.

  “I suppose I would,” Ernie replied.

  “She wanted out of the life,” Jill continued, “but she was two thousand dollars in debt to gangsters for key money for her hooch, and for costumes, and for transportation to gigs, and for money just to live.”

  “So she asked you to help?” Ernie said.

  “Why do you make it sound that way? Like she was trying to con me or something? I knew about it, she told me, but she never asked me for money.”

  “Until after she was raped by the Division honchos.”

  “Even then,” Jill said, becoming angry now, “she didn’t ask me for money. She asked me to help her get even.”

  “And the best way to do that . . .” Ernie let the question hang.

  Jill frowned.

  Their romance was deteriorating quickly but I knew Ernie was just doing his job. Skeptical and cop are the same word.

  “She showed me photographs another girl had taken,” Jill said. “Of old farts with pot bellies on top of her. And on top of the other girls. Even Colonel Alcott.”

  “Why do you say ‘even’ Colonel Alcott?” Ernie asked.

  “Because he always made a big deal about being a deacon in his church back home and made speeches about trusting in God and all that stuff but as soon as he had a chance, he hopped on a helpless Korean business girl just like every other GI in the ville.”

  She glared at Ernie. The statement was more like an accusation. Ernie crossed his arms and stared back at her. She continued.

  “So we decided to use the photographs to get money. Not money out of their pockets, all of them were too cheap for that, but money out of the slush fund. The mafia meeting slush fund.”

  “Where was this slush fund located?” Ernie asked.

  “On compound. In Colonel Alcott’s room. It’s more than a room really, it’s almost like a little house. Bigger than the trailer me and my mom lived in. He has a safe in there.”

  “So you just waltzed up one day,” Ernie said, “showed Colonel Alcott the photographs and demanded two thousand dollars?”

  “That’s pretty much it. He wanted to bargain but I told him he could replace the money with one black-market run out to the ville and I told him that I didn’t care about my military career and I would write my congressman in a heartbeat if he didn’t come across. So he did. Two thousand big ones.”

  “And then Miss Kim thanked you,” Ernie said, “tears in her eyes.”

  “You’re laughing at me.” Jill said.

  “Not laughing,” Ernie said. “It’s the oldest con in the ville. But usually it’s worked on GIs who are only thinking with their dicks. With you, she had to rely on your sympathy for a woman set upon by the male power structure.”

  “Screw you, Ernie.”

  “Any time. But you were taken, Jill. Miss Kim Yong-ai used you to get at that mafia meeting slush fund.”

  She thought about it for a while. “No,” she said finally. “Miss Kim didn’t use me. I’m glad she’s free.”

  “Free to work in a teahouse?” I said.

  “How did you know?”

  “If she’s not stripping, and not selling herself, the only place in Wondang that would stay open until curfew would be a teahouse.”

  “She’s a hostess to wealthy men,” Jill said, “but it’s better now.” Then she stared at me and Ernie, defiant. “So how do we get the proof to bust these assholes?”

  They both looked at me.

  I sipped my barley tea. Madame Chon had left us but the old maid was rustling around the cement-floored kitchen. I found her and asked for a paper and pen. In a few minutes, she’d cleared the eating table, wiped it down, and laid out a ballpoint pen and a fresh pad of writing paper. I drew a map.

  Camp Casey has four gates. The main gate, the supply/motor pool gate, and the gate leading to Camp Hovey are all guarded by Division MPs. They are heavily armed with automatic pistols, M-16 rifles, and .50-caliber machine guns. The chain link fence surrounding the massive compound is topped with rolled concertina wire and is patrolled twenty-four hours a day by guards hired by a security contractor approved by the Korean government. All the Korean security guards are well trained, motivated to keep one of the few jobs in country with good pay and benefits, and almost all of them are Korean War veterans since they receive priority in hiring. Each guard is armed with an M-1 rifle and knows how to use it.

  The fourth and final gate is the gate leading to the Camp Casey firing ranges where GIs practice their marksmanship. These gates are chained at night but not guarded by MPs, merely patrolled by the subcontracted security guards.

  None of it seemed too promising as far as surreptitious entry went and Jill Matthewson, who’d actually visited all of these gates, didn’t like the idea of trying to sneak our way in.

  “Those security guards are sharp,” she said. “They’re not asleep at the switch. They’ve had North Korean commandoes try to slip in before, and they know they’ll be fired if someone breaks in on their watch.”

  “I don’t like it either,” Ernie said. “Too risky.”

  “So how do we get to Colonel Alcott’s safe?” I asked.

  “There’s a way,” Jill said.

  We listened. She took a deep breath, as if revealing something very important to us. “Tomorrow is March first.”

  I knew what it was. Samil jol, it’s called. The March First Movement. A Korean national holiday to honor the student-led civil uprising against the Japanese colonial occupation that took place March 1, 1919.

  “All the students are off,” Jill said. “The GIs aren’t.”

  “So they’re coming up here,” Ernie guessed, “for another demonstration?”

  Jill nodded. “This is going to be the big one.”

  “How do you know?”

  Then she told us about the Colonel Han she’d mentioned, the man who’d helped her and Kim Yong-ai escape from the Forest of the Seven Clouds when Bufford and Weatherwax had come to arrest her. Colonel Han Kuk-chei was the Commander of the 1611 Communications Brigade. What made him unusual for a ROK Army officer was not that he frequented kisaeng houses. That was routine. Rather, it was that he was involved with student demonstrators and he was opposed to the current regime. He belonged to an old yang-ban family, Confucian scholars and landholders, and he considered the current occupant of the Blue House—the Korean version of the White House—to be an usurper of an office that rightfully belonged to him and his kind. That’s why he was cooperating with radical students.

  His goal, however, according to Jill, was more radical than even the most radical student. His goal was to reunify the Korean Peninsula—both North and South Korea—into one country. A country to be ruled under traditional Confucian principles.

  I took Jill’s hand. It wasn’t soft. It was a hand used to work, used to holding the butt of an automatic pistol, but it was a woman’s hand nevertheless.

  “We can bust these black-market honchos at Division,” I said. “It won’t be easy but we can do it. But if you’re caught in the middle of some political game with the Koreans, there’s no telling what could go wrong. You could be hurt.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “But I promised him.”

  “’Him?’”

  “Colonel Han.”

  “You promised him what?”

  “I promised that I’d help, at the critical moment. The plan is beautiful really. And when you listen to him talk about why it’s necessary, you’ll be as convinced as I am.”

  “We’re Americans, Jill. This is Korea.
It’s their country.”

  “But we’re involved,” she answered. “We’re the reason why their country is divided.”

  Ernie rolled his eyes. I felt the same way. That’s all we needed. A political radical along with all our other problems. I still didn’t know what all this had to do with us gaining access to Camp Casey and the black-market records held in Colonel Alcott’s safe.

  The front buzzer rang. We sprang to our feet. Madame Chon appeared and whispered something to the elderly maid. She nodded and they both walked to the front of the house. The maid returned with our shoes and Madame Chon walked across the courtyard to the front gate.

  “Nugu seiyo?” she asked. Who is it?

  “Sohn Tamjong,” a man’s voice said. Agent Sohn. Then he asked if he might speak to her, using honorific verb endings and sounding very polite. I remembered the voice. I grabbed my shoes from the maid and asked her where to find the back exit. She led the way.

  Ernie whispered, “What’s up?”

  “That voice,” I told him. “I’ve heard it before. Come on. We’ve got to get out of here.”

  Ernie and I headed for the rear of the house. Jill grabbed her bag and followed. We reached the back door and went outside, past the byonso reeking of bleach, to a brick wall with a short metal door in it.

  “Who was it?” Ernie asked.

  “At the KNP station, here in Tongduchon, when we were interrogated, he sat in back of me. Observing. Only speaking at the end.”

  “KCIA,” Ernie said. The Korean Central Intelligence Agency. The agency responsible for quelling internal political dissent.

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Who the hell else would it be?”

  He was right. Only the KCIA had the power to butt in on KNP operations.

  A padlocked, rusty iron rod barred the small back gate. The maid reached into the pocket of her skirt, pulled out a key, and popped open the padlock. Then she backed up and pointed. Ernie stepped forward, grabbed the rusty rod and, twisting it, managed to pull it free. With a squeak, the little door swung open. Ernie pulled his .45 and peeked through.